Twitter Seva: Government's helpline for startups seeking funds and support

Called the “Twitter Seva” service, it will act as a helpline of sorts for entrepreneurs seeking funding, support or government assistance of any kind.Surabhi Agarwal | ET Bureau | April 13, 2016, 09:04 IST

NEW DELHI: The government is following up the big-bang launch of the ‘Start up India, Stand up India’ initiative with setting up a hotline for entrepreneurs on micro-blogging site Twitter. Called the “Twitter Seva” service, it will act as a helpline of sorts for entrepreneurs seeking funding, support or government assistance of any kind. According to government officials in the know, San Francisco-headquartered Twitter is being roped in for the service that is likely to be launched on April 21.

A team of officials from the ministry of commerce and industry will be deployed behind the scenes to help startups get connected to various stakeholders such as venture capitalists, incubation centres or iron out any issues with government clearances. The service is being modeled after the citizen engagement initiatives of the Railway and power ministry on Twitter.

“It is a very active grievance redressal mechanism through social media because most of the entrepreneurs that the ministry caters to are already online, so using Twitter to solve their problems makes sense,” said a government official who did not wish to be identified.

The person added that currently the process is manual where the top officials of the ministry including the union minister for commerce and industry Nirmala Sitharaman would manually scan all the tweets on a daily basis, direct complaints to the relevant authorities and revert with solutions.

“Through this initiative with Twitter, a full blown software will be developed which will automate the whole process, working out a mechanism where grievances are automatically routed in real time to the concerned person, who works on it and feeds it back to the person,” said the official.

The service could become a platform for people to present their ideas to the government which can choose to take it forward. Under the Startup policy, the government has decided to take a spate of measure to promote entrepreneurship in the country but course correction is a critical part of the process; said a second official.

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